Muddy Creek: A Paranormal Mystery (Taryn's Camera Book 7) Read online

  She would never forgive herself for it.

  The old house needed a ton of work. Everyone had tried to talk her into selling it. She’d certainly needed the money. That house was as much of her as it had been of her aunt, though. She couldn’t let it go. When the settlement had come through, she’d used a chunk of it to go towards restoration. Taryn had no idea what she was going to do with the house once it was finished but there was still time to think about it.

  “Dude, really?” Taryn stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and glared at the heavyset reporter who had just nonchalantly tossed his Styrofoam coffee cup to the ground. The brown liquid remaining inside sloshed out, splattering the concrete and speckling Taryn’s boots.

  “Oops,” he grinned, but didn’t over to do anything about his litter.

  Taryn remained where she stood, her hands on her hips. Several others paused and were now watching the little scene unfold. “You are going to get that, right?”

  The man shrugged. He could’ve been anywhere from twenty-five to forty. With his stubble, jeans, microphone, and camera man in tow there was little to set him apart from the others. They were all starting to look alike.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Pick it up,” Taryn said slowly, enunciating each word. “Why should someone else do it?”

  Not to mention the fact that the garbage can was literally only five steps away.

  Now, with a slightly red face, the man bent over and grabbed it. What was left of the coffee spilled onto his hand. It was his turn to glare at Taryn as the little rivets ran down his fingers. “Happy?”

  “Sure.”

  “What do you care, anyway? You’re not from here. I’ve seen you at the motel.”

  Taryn shrugged. “I’m a human being. Geeze, dude. Have a little respect for the place.”

  He snorted, an ugly sound that made his troll-like face even more unattractive. “Ha! Have you seen the amount of garbage they got up and down the roads, lady? The burnt out trailers and broken cars they use as yard art? Good damn. I ain’t having no respect for any place until they start respecting themselves!”

  Several around him nodded their approval, although a few managed to look somewhat ashamed. Still, he walked the short distance to the garbage can and tossed the cup.

  “I ought to have earned some kind of karma for that,” Taryn muttered to herself as she quickened her pace. Some cat calls followed her as she left the scene and continued to the library.

  She really ought not to be allowed out in public sometimes.

  * * *

  “TWO BIRDS, ONE STONE,” Taryn whispered to herself, flipping through the microfiche. She’d be able to look up the old school to get some ideas of what it had looked like intact and carry out research for her other project at the same time.

  What set this job apart from a lot of her others was the relative newness of the building itself. Most of the time her paintings were the only true representations of the buildings she recreated; either they’d been built and destroyed before photographs were popular or the original ones had been lost. Muddy Creek Elementary, however, had no shortage of images to peruse.

  This was, after all, more of an emotional hire than anything else. They had hired her to create a painting of a place many in the county viewed with nostalgia. The painting, if she’d understood the debate at the PTA meeting right, would hang in the library until the community center could be built. It served no real purpose, however, other than sentimentality. Any number of people in the county almost certainly had a picture good enough to be blown up and used for the same purpose. Sometimes people just liked something a little different.

  (Good for her, of course, or else she’d be out of a job.)

  From 1986 until 1989 she’d found no less than fifteen articles featuring helpful photos of the school. All sides were represented. It would undoubtedly be the easiest job she’d ever had. Even an amateur could print off any of those pictures, study it, and paint a decent recreation by using it as a template.

  Fortunately, Taryn’s talents were a little extra special. When she was finished anyone looking at the painting would feel as though they could walk right on inside and make their way to their desk. She didn’t just paint what she saw, she painted what she felt.

  “’Muddy Creek Cardinals Win County Tournament’,” Taryn read aloud. “Coach LeRoy Marcum led the Cardinals in a win against the Turkey Falcons 44-32 for the trophy. ‘My boys had a good season,’ he said after the game. ‘They worked real hard and we’re ready to come back even stronger next year.’”

  The coach and his team stood outside the gym, their red uniforms clean and straightened by worried mothers. They smiled proudly at the camera as the tallest stood in the middle and held the trophy up over his head. It was nearly as big as he was. They couldn’t have been more than ten, eleven years old.

  Taryn’s heard melted a little at the sight of the sweet, young faces that beamed out at her. She wondered if Jamey was amongst the group.

  Another picture, six months later in 1988, showed two boys and two girls sitting at a table in front of a shelf full of books. In their hands were what looked like pieces of plywood with lightbulbs screwed into the middle. Taryn leaned in closer, trying to figure out what she was looking at. When she realized what they were, she laughed.

  “Muddy Creek Academic Team prepares for regionals,” she giggled. They were buzzers, antiquated ones of course. She’d been on the academic team in high school but their buzzers had looked like little black flashlights and fit in the palms of their hands.

  She paused briefly on a picture of a young girl, perhaps eight or nine, that stood under the letters on the front of the school. She wore a pink frilly dress, complete with layers of ruffles, and had a headband adorned with lacy pink flowers. “My, my. They sure did dress for school here.”

  Her name was Jenny McPhee and she had apparently been traveling to Charleston that day to collect an award for the school. Muddy Creek had the highest test scores in the state that year. It was 1989. The young girl was beaming, her wide smile revealing a row of crooked teeth.

  Over the next hour Taryn went through dozens more. She read stories about cheerleaders, basketball players, the enrichment group, a field day… She especially enjoyed the shots of the mock Olympics. A young, good-looking male teacher stood behind a finish line, fists pumped into the air and mouth open in a “whoop” as he cheered his students forward. All in all it looked like Muddy Creek had been a nice little school. Everyone appeared happy in the shots but then, of course, they would have knowing that they were going to be in the paper.

  With her eyes starting to hurt and a headache forming, Taryn was about to call it a day when one last picture caught her eye. A rather plain-looking little girl gazed solemnly at the readers. Through the black and white it was hard to tell what shade her hair was, but it looked brown. She stood next to an older woman perched on a stool. They were in the gym and the rest of the students were gathered around, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Taryn couldn’t see their faces. The little girl wore overalls and a flannel shirt. Her hair hung down in messy braids; her knee was ripped and stained. The woman beside her held a guitar, her head tilted back and eyes closed.

  “Ten-year-old Lucy Dawson sings with Marilu Evans at Muddy Creek’s annual talent show.” Taryn read it aloud then moved her face closer to the screen, to where her nose was almost touching it. The young girl glowered back at her. Something about her eyes, the way they focused dead straight ahead of her, made Taryn shudder. It was as though she was looking at Taryn nearly thirty years into the future.

  “Well, hello there Lucy,” Taryn whispered, not caring if the other patrons could hear her. “It’s nice to see you again.”

  Fourteen

  Taryn was feeling good about her day. She’d organized her supplies, put in a good morning of research, and fought with a reporter. Not too shabby.

  Now, sitting in her car, she looked over the stack of brochures she’d p
icked up at the West Virginia Welcome Center on her drive up. There had to be things to do in the area. She’d find them.

  “Wild & Wonderful West Virginia,” Taryn read aloud. “Let’s see…hiking, kayaking, rollercoasters, Museum of Art, bowling…”

  Suddenly, Taryn felt very tired.

  “The Huntington Mall?” Remembering her overflowing closet back home, the one she kept promising herself she’d purge, she shook her head. “Can’t do it.”

  Then, something else caught her eye. “Oh my God!” Taryn squealed, as excited as she’d ever been. “Van Lear!”

  It wasn’t nearby, or even in West Virginia at all, but according to her GPS it was less than an hour and a half away. That settled it. Fifteen minutes later she’d filled up her car with gas and her stomach with a Hershey and Mountain Dew and was on her way to Butcher Holler.

  “I’m coming Loretty!” Taryn sang as she sped out of town, leaving Muddy Creek behind. “This is the best day of my life.” To commemorate the occasion, she popped in a CD and cranked up “Van Lear Rose,” the rocking duet between Jack Black and Loretta Lynn. As a southern girl and traditional country music lover, it would’ve been downright embarrassing to have been so close and not visit the Old Homestead.

  Taryn always liked her life, but sometimes she downright loved it.

  * * *

  ALTHOUGH SHE’D BEEN DISAPPOINTED that Loretta Lynn’s brother was ill and unable to give her a tour of the old log cabin, she was excited about the fact that, in the late afternoon hour, she was the only one wandering around.

  “Huh, I thought it would be more isolated,” Taryn mused as she walked around the little house, the soft grass moist under her boots. She laughed at her complaint, and at herself. Although the house was fairly close to the road, that road was barely more than one lane and from where she stood she saw nothing but towering mountains and a deep valley. There wasn’t another building, car, or person in sight.

  She’d seen “Coal Miner’s Daughter” more than a dozen times. Now, as she and Miss Dixie explored the grounds of her idol’s house, she found herself quoting random lines from the film.

  "I didn’t know it was dirty. I thought ‘horny’ meant cuttin’ up and actin’ silly.” Taryn giggled aloud, her laughter echoing off the side of the mountain. “’And come off of that dumb hillbilly act.’ ‘If you knew Loretta you’d know that ain’t no act.’”

  Taryn laughed again. After bouncing over the boundary, she now stood on the front porch, holding her breath in reverence. The acoustics were terrific and for a moment she considered singing a few lines from “You Ain’t Woman Enough to Take My Man” or “One’s On the Way.” When she opened her mouth to sing, however, it didn’t feel right. It was too sacrilegious; this was hallowed ground, after all.

  “Country music is my church,” Taryn declared reverently, stroking a wood beam.

  The feeling of just being there, of exploring the old homestead and seeing something for the first time in person that she’d only read about or seen on television was overwhelming. “It’s like a hillbilly Mecca,” she’d tried to explain to Matt once. “Loretta and Dolly are like our leaders.”

  “You’re not a hillbilly, though,” Matt had pointed out. “You were born in downtown Nashville. You grew up mostly in a subdivision.”

  Taryn had rolled her eyes at him. Sometimes the truth had no place in her fantasies. Besides, she might not have been born at the end of an old dirt road or spent her childhood cutting tobacco but the honesty of the music and integrity of the artists had always spoken to her. That had to count for something.

  She was born not only in the wrong time period, but in the wrong part of the country.

  Somewhere out there was a thirtysomething woman, sitting in an old farm house and staring out the window at the mountains, feeling like she was missing her place in the crowds of the city.

  Taryn filled up the rest of her memory card with pictures of Butcher Holler and Van Lear, a picturesque mining community that was interesting in its own right. She stopped every so often and checked her LCD screen, hoping that Miss Dixie had caught something from Loretta’s life. The shots were all normal, though.

  “Damn. What’s the use of being able to do this if I can’t pick up on the cool stuff?”

  On the way back out she stopped at the old country store, filled to the brim with concert shots and family pictures, and dutifully bought a T-shirt that she promptly slipped on.

  “I needed that,” Taryn smiled when she was back on the main road, heading back to Muddy Creek. She tried to sightsee when she could. It helped to get to know the place. And today had been worth it in other ways. She was now feeling more peaceful, more motivated.

  “Dang,” Taryn shook her head as the road widened and the sky blackened. “An hour and a half to get back and this is a good road.”

  She tried to imagine what it had been like even fifteen years earlier, back when the “new road” had felt like a pipedream. Heather had told her that before the new one came in, it had taken almost an hour to get to the nearest big grocery store–located in the county seat in the next county over. Now it took less than half that. Back in Nashville people were always righteously complaining about the coal mines and coal companies. So far in Muddy Creek she’d been surprised to hear the opposite–to hear some downright praising going on, which went against everything she’d been taught. There were lots of bad things that could be said about the coal mining industry, but some good things could be said about it as well. If not for the coal company, that road wouldn’t exist.

  Taryn thought about that as she drove along, traveling deeper and deeper into the mountains. She liked being out in the middle of nowhere, but she also liked to get out when she needed to.

  * * *

  “SO YOU ENJOYED YOUR DAY?”

  Taryn juggled her phone from shoulder to shoulder as she tugged at her jeans and kicked off her boots. “Yep! I went to Van Lear, to Butcher Holler.”

  “I didn’t know that was in West Virginia,” Matt said.

  “It’s not. I drove over the state line to Kentucky,” Taryn replied. “Oh, and I also spent the morning at the library. Saw a lot of pictures of the school from back in the 1980s. So that was cool. I didn’t really find anything that stood out, though. The biggest tragedy seemed to be the high teacher turnover rate and the school’s closing.”

  “So nothing to attribute any urban legends to?” Matt asked.

  “Nah. Not that I could see. I don’t know. Maybe I wasn’t on the right track at all. You do anything?”

  She could hear Matt shuffling papers on the other side of the phone. She figured he’d been busy. When Matt had a project, he committed. Matt enjoyed having projects. It made him feel useful.

  “Nothing about the school, per se, but I did find out something interesting about the town,” he began.

  “Yeah? Devil worshipping center? The lost colony of Roanoke end up here?”

  “Not that interesting, unfortunately,” he laughed. “Actually, some of this is kind of morbid.”

  “Do tell!”

  “Okay, so let’s get the mundane out of the way…The county’s primary industry is coal mining, which we already knew. Strip mining and mountaintop removal are the preferred forms of extraction today, and have been since the 1980s. Second biggest industry is education, followed by healthcare.”

  “Kind of funny, considering the county doesn’t even have a hospital,” Taryn smiled.

  “It’s rated the third poorest county in the state. Unemployment rate is a staggering 43%.”

  “Damn!” Taryn was impressed. It made sense, though. There wasn’t much there. “So the unofficial top industry is the–“

  “Welfare system,” Matt supplied.

  “Well, I was going to say government assistance programs. The U.S doesn’t have welfare anymore, not the way we had it before. President Clinton eradicated it. Now, in order to receive assistance, you either have to apply for disability or go through the program th
at makes you have to work, go to school, or volunteer a certain number of hours a week.”

  “Huh, I didn’t know that.”

  Taryn shrugged. “I watch a lot of TV. So what else?”

  “Okay, here’s the sad thing. Have you heard of, or has anyone mentioned, a kid by the name of Lukas Monroe?”

  Taryn ran the name through her mind and ruminated on it for a moment before answering. “Nope. Not ringing a bell.”

  “Well, his story isn’t exactly a heartwarming one. He was abused, basically tortured, by his family back in the early 1990s. Happened right there on Main Street where you’re at.”

  Taryn looked around the motel room, half expecting this Lukas to pop out at her and say “boo”. “Geeze. That’s awful. What happened?”

  “I have some links. I’ll send them to you,” Matt said, his voice somber. “It’s not really something I want to talk about just yet. I read through a lot of stories about it and I am still trying to process.”

  “No, that’s fine. Just send them to me. I can take the heavy stuff.”

  “Taryn, it’s some pretty horrific stuff. You might want to pace yourself,” Matt warned her. Taryn promised him she would.

  Once she’d hung up she settled back on the bed and snuggled into her pillow. With the lamp and television on the room was almost cozy. She would wait until tomorrow to read Matt’s message. She hadn’t heard the kid’s name, or knew anything about the story. She couldn’t see how it might be connected to what she was doing, but she’d been surprised before.

  The sounds of the reporters outside were almost soothing. She was getting used to them. “You can’t change shit around here,” one of them was saying now. “It’s a piss-ant town with sloppy rednecks,” another one agreed. They shared a spiteful laugh, like a Greek chorus in the background of her night.

  Suddenly, the television flickered off. Before Taryn could reach for the remote, the lamp beside her flashed dead as well, going out with a “clink” and a small puff of smoke. The pale streetlamp from outside filtering in around her thick, smoke-filled curtains was the only light she was left with.